Gene Simmons Destroyer Costume

Step 9 Scaly Legs

Originally, I had planned to cut the leg scales out of more bucket plastic, but after building a test version it became clear that the plastic scales were not nearly flexible enough, and weighed a ton.
I decided instead to use stiff felt.
I made a base for the scales by cutting the legs off of an old pair of my son’s black jeans that he had outgrown, opening the outside seam, measuring from his ankle to a couple of inches above his knee, and hemming the top edges at that measurement.
I then installed heavy-duty black parka zippers along the opened outside seam to close the legs back up. My zippers were a couple of inches longer than they needed to be, so I put them in with the excess length at the top of the jeans leg so that the leftover zipper could be tucked in at the top to hide it. As it turned out, this extra zipper made them easier to get zipped up anyway, as it served as a place to grip while zipping.
Then I made the scales. I bought six large sheets of stiff craft felt (black, because the store didn’t have grey) and marked out rows of scales picket-fence style. I figured that it would be easier to sew on a few rows of scales connected together at the bottom than to try and sew on a gazillion individual scales.
Gene’s real boots have three different sizes of scales, so I made mine that way too. The large scales were 2 ½” wide x 3” tall, the medium ones were 2” x 3”, and the small ones were 1 ½” x 3”. After all the rows of scales were cut out (6 lg, 10 med, 8 sm), I added a little dimension by running a bead of hot glue along the curved top edge of each scale.
The rows of scales were then dipped into a 50/50 mixture of white glue and water (for extra stiffness and paint adhesion), and hung outside to drip dry.
When dry, I painted the front and back of each row with more Krylon Fusion Hammered Metal paint, trying to leave the scales a little darker in the center and brighter on the edges. If I had an airbrush, I would have darkened the center of the scales with black paint as a separate step after the silver base coat, but I don’t have an airbrush, so I just did my best with the silver paint.
Once all the paint had dried, I sewed each row to the jeans legs, starting at the top with the first row of large scales hanging over the top of the jeans leg by an inch and a half or so. One straight stitch across the bottom of the row was all it took. My sewing machine was not happy about sewing glued and spray painted felt to a jeans leg, but I eventually made it through. I overlapped the scales in an offset pattern for maximum coverage and to hide the previous row’s stitching. Gene’s real boots have been made (at different times) with both offset scales and straight-up-and-down columns of scales, so I just picked the pattern I liked best.
I then trimmed off the excess scales at the zipper line, and the scaly part of the boots was finished.
After my son had worn them a few times, I noticed that they tended to "settle" down to knee level, so I hot-glued a strip of leftover stiff felt inside each one along the shinbone area to help keep the scales from slumping.